Yeah. That's about it. When you consider the millions of people who have gone before, and even the thousands of people who would be my own ancestors, you have to accept that each person, as important as they thought they were in the grand scheme of things, was actually just a drop in the vast ocean of humanitiy.
My life is, in some complex way, an outgrowth of hundreds of gene pools combined, and an infinite array of social and historical forces. Combine all that with a huge degree of randomness and happenstance leading up to my conception and birth, and you get something that is almost completely unlikely, and definitely not possible to repeat again.
And yet, if I hadn't been here, would the world have been so much different? Well, I can say with certainty that my children would think so! No. They wouldn't even exist. My wife would have a different life entirely. This house I'm sitting in would look completely different. All of those students I've taught would have had a different music teacher. And so on.
But even when I consider how much of a "dent" my life has made in the cosmos, I have to admit that it is still of very, very little signficance overall. The sun would have gone on to rise without me. The tide would have come in without me. All my school buddies and lifelong acquaintances would still be here. The closer they would have been to me, the greater would be the noticeable difference without me. Like waves in a pond, the water is less agitated the farther away from the thrown stone.
Yes, there is a need to be able to look at one's entire life and say, fuck it. In the end it doesn't really matter one way or another in the grand scheme of things. I can waste a lot of time and worry thinking about things that I can't change, or running around trying to make my life better by doing this, that, or the other. Truth is, I am what I am right now. This is 100% me. All of my potential and creative spark is present now. Nothing is missing. Nothing more to become and nothing to be shaken off.
